afternoon
Ns had some cars in the siding when I left work.Chores to do.Mother nature might send us some rain yet.
stay safe
Joe
Deshler Ohio-crossroads of the B&O Matt eats your fries.YUM! Clinton st viaduct undefeated against too tall trucks!!!(voted to be called the "Clinton St. can opener").
Ns was clear when I left work.Worked on some chores.Tomorrow is flag day.Tomorrow is also Matt's b-day.
Morning
Mother nature sent us no rain yesterday.After church it's our annual Sunday school picnic.We are on the helper board this year.Hope everyone has a great day.
A car with no number wouldn't be able to legally operate. It must have been there somewhere!Small wheels are probably indicative of a low-deck flat car; the wheels are 28 inches in diameter instead of the 33 inches usually found under an 89-foot flat. Cars like this are usually destined to receive trilevel auto racks. I suspect that it may be a prototype for a new Trinity Industries design.Having said all of that, I'd have to see a picture to know any of it for sure.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Question for Carl. Had a long flat (89 ft ? ) with no sides or ends pass here. Marked TIMX ( no number ) with no other marking such as load, build, etc. There was no obvious "B" end. Wheels were very small causing flat floor appearing at least 15" lower than other cars . Did not notice what if any brake rigging. Carl any ideas ?
Mid-July weather - high 90's and high humidity - but nice south breeze made it easy to watch a NS engine going east along with the ugh-orange units. Paper sez traffic is up for the railroads. Yessss!
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
Under the gun, weather-wise, on Saturday, although Lake Ontario tends to moderate the severe stuff. We'll have to see which way it tracks in.
Making sure radios and cameras are charged up and ready to go in the meantime.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Muggy here in Nw Ohio.We got rain at work but none here at home.Ns has a westbound starting to roll when I left.Going in for some OT tomorrow morning.Going to find a cool place for tomorrow afternoon.
Utilities will never know nor will they care. Coal cars will be dropped at the destination and merchandise cars either dropped at a yard or dropped at a siding for pick up and delivery by a local (or similar transfer). Utility is interested in receiving coal, and how the RR runs the train is not their concern. Just as you don't know where the electricity comes from when you turn on your light switch. You just want the light to light. Electricity is somewhat unique in that it is not stored (ignoring batteries, and other subjects), it is generated and consumed in real time. It can come from wind turbines, steam turbines (coal, oil, gas or nuclear), gas turbines, hydro turbines, diesel powered generators, solar cells with inverters or something I've missed, but when you turn the switch on, thats when its generated. And it is all comingled onto the grid so it might come from a nearby source or far. I watched power meters at a Midwest utility company and when a large generator in Florida triped off the grid, we could see the frequency drop just a little, (60.001 Hz
to 59.988 HZ). Then the goveners on all the generators across the grid kicked in and brought the grid back to 60.001 HZ. The utility that you are citing is concerned about having coal in its storage pile to use when the boilers need it to meet its customers needs when they turn on their switches. They contract with a supplier to furnish a specified grade of coal in an amount to meet their projected needs and the means of delivery is part of the contract. The utility may own the cars and in the case of Detroit Edison, they even supplied the locomotives for their unit trains. They might have been concerned if they were paying for the fuel in their contract and the RR stuck other cars into their train. But most RR trains are billed at ton/mile rates and that would not be an issue.
Well CSX has done something interesting. A unit coal train that goes south on the A&WP subdivision a few times of the week came south yesterday with a bunch of manifest cars on the rear. Won't the utilities love that ?
Started out chilly this morning, but warmed nicely this afternoon.
The rain is supposed to hold off until Saturday afternoon, so I can probably get the lawn trimmed. I should get some annuals planted, too. I like my petunias!
Attended a meeting tonight that probably set a record for the shortest meeting of that organization ever. Even got home in time to participate in not one, but two nets on the ham radio...
Time to go play with the 3D printer for a while. Can't even come close to saying I've got it mastered...
evening
Ns was clear when I left work.Matt and I went into Defiance.Csx sent a long stack train.Tomorrow is Friday.Mother nature is sending the muggies and maybe some rain.Chores to do.
Somebody flipped th switch. Here we go! 51 degrees coming to work yesterday. 95 degrres going home from work tonight.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
CShaveRR I'm in Techachapi, California, with an oblique but relatively open view of the BNSF-UP main line from my hotel room...the best in the house! The line has been busy. Even though I don't run to the window every time now that it's dark, it's great to hear so much going by.
I'm in Techachapi, California, with an oblique but relatively open view of the BNSF-UP main line from my hotel room...the best in the house! The line has been busy. Even though I don't run to the window every time now that it's dark, it's great to hear so much going by.
Carl I'll send you the link.Ns trains on the wabash at St.Joe were backed up so the Csx and Ns reroutes could get through.Darn this working buisness but it pays the bills.Off to work we go.
If I ever needed to spend my days in a room where someone cleaned up after me, fed me breakfast, etc., etc., I think it would be a room like this!I'm in Techachapi, California, with an oblique but relatively open view of the BNSF-UP main line from my hotel room...the best in the house! The line has been busy. Even though I don't run to the window every time now that it's dark, it's great to hear so much going by.This comes after a hot day of driving across the desert (we stopped for lunch in Barstow, where it was 99 above before noon), during which we saw many BNSF trains--sometimes as many as three in one wide-open view--when the tracks were within sight. I've been calling things "spectacular" a lot lately, and the word fits all of them!Tomorrow we get to Lompoc, another Land of No Trains, where we spend several days with Linda's family. Maybe then I can catch up on the neat stuff I've seen...two new-to-me reporting marks just today!Was it a wreck in Elkhart, Joe? Or just congestion? I've been kind of busy driving and documenting, hence out of the loop.
ns has a mess in Elkhart.Amtrak detoured on csx.Ns trains are also running on Csx.Had an Ns stack train in the siding at work.Another one passed it when I left.Might have 1 track open now.Time to go look.
Ns had empty cars when I left work.We went into Defiance.The ND&W was working on the gettysburg engine.Heard two trains on CSX but was stuck in traffic.The power that was on the rail train is now the Y101 power.Wonder where they put the B&O caboose at?Chores to do.
Yes, Johnny, we did see the slide...almost missed it because I was looking toward the track side of the road.We just got a disappointment today...no motels/hotels available to us in Sin City, so we're bravely pressing forward another 100 miles to Kingman, where we now have reservations and I hope BNSF cooperates.
Best wishes for a successful surgery!
Carl, did you notice that sometimes the number one track is on the north and sometimes it is on the south? At times, there is a great separation between the two. Obviously, when the second track was laid, a better grade was found for it.
I hope you noticed Devil's Slide on the south some time before you reached Ogden.
This afternoon, I will be back in the hospital for some needed, planned surgery
Johnny
My wife, my parasite, and I are on vacation. Not much to report except that two of us are having a great time in spite of the third. However, my Facebook entry from yesterday is here because it was possibly the best day so far, railfan-wise.
I have discovered a new favorite stretch of highway!
First things first, though...we saw the UP yards in Green River and Evanston before we left Wyoming. We also saw the desolate country which once gave the railroad its biggest source of revenue: soda ash. The terrain there along I-80 was mostly in the shades of brown, white, and green, made stark by the dark clouds on one horizon and the dark, snow-capped mountains on the other. A billboard and this scenery combined to help Pat come up with an idea for another quilt (the billboard led us to a quilt shop well of the highway, in a shopping center in the middle of nowhere). I made myself useful by coming up with the green color that her plans need to be reminiscent of this area.
Into Utah at the southeastern corner of Wyoming, on I-80, with the Union Pacific tracks on our right. No longer as busy as they were in Nebraska and most of Wyoming, as the tracks to the Pacific Northwest have curved away. But before we could bring our car up to the 80-mph speed limit, we saw a train moving in our direction. We quickly overhauled it, found a convenient exit that allowed us to get a good view, and waited for the train to move slowly west past us.
At the same spot was an eastbound train of auto racks, stopped. I'd never seen a place like this--it looked like the train was literally "in the hole". I was watching the westbound freight over the tops of the 19-foot-tall auto racks. But, as we were there, he whistled off and began to move. By the time the westbound was gone, the eastbound had also disappeared, having reached track speed in less than his own length.
This turned out to be the start of my favorite stretch of highway--the tracks stayed close to the road, but were on different levels from each other--probably favoring one direction over the other in the days before CTC and distributed power largely equalized things. We soon caught up to our westbound, high above an eastbound business train, dome cars and all (nobody can put together as sharp-looking a bunch of passenger cars as Union Pacific can!).
This is still the route of the first transcontinental railroad. They were in a hurry to build that line, and I'm sure the track's alignment was nowhere near what we were witnessing today. Around the turn of the last century, the railroad was in bankruptcy. It took a lot of work on the part of E. H. Harriman to build the railroad up to the standards we now see, or at least a pre-evolutionary version of them. As I-80 headed west, the terrain became more canyon-like, and the smoother, more consistent grade of the railroad became apparent. We caught up with another westbound freight train, at another of those convenient exits (complete with cattle guards), gathered a lot of info from close up, and got back on the road. We got ahead of the train, and started seeing his block signals...flashing yellow, then solid yellow, then red, before we caught another train, standing still (short, exclusively tank cars, passed up because I didn't think I needed anything). And so it went, all the way down.
But the railroad itself was far from the only attraction of this route--the cliffs were spectacular, and the relative open places were beautiful. We watched the terrain change from sagebrush to tall pines, the cliffs from white or tan to terra-cotta.
The railroad made a sharp curve toward the north where I-80 meets I-84 at Echo. We took 84 north toward Ogden, where we had lunch, got some more yarn for Pat, then visited the museums (plural, to the tune of four or five) that are housed in the old Union Station there. While we were looking at the old equipment there (a UP 4-8-4, an 8500-horsepower gas-turbine-electric locomotive, a UP DDA40X, an SD40T2 that was retired while still lettered for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, a Southern Pacific SD45, an old Santa Fe "Alligator" from the Utah Railway, and some old freight and passenger cars.
So this is my newest favorite stretch of road--Interstate 80 from Evanston to Echo, and Interstate 84 from there north toward Ogden. I honestly don't think that for my purposes any road--or railroad, for that matter--comes close, and it's a surprisingly long stretch: about 53 miles of exciting travel at speed limits of up to 80.
I had entertained the thought of going north and west from Ogden to Promontory, where the railroads from the east and west met to form the first Transcontinental Railroad (you know, golden spike, 5/10/1869, two steam locomotives meeting pilot to pilot, and so on). They re-enact the scene there, pushing together replicas of the two locomotives. We elected not to go there, because it would have added about 100 miles to the trip, and because the actual railroad no longer goes through there. Mr. Harriman's main line revision saved several grades and several miles by crossing the Great Salt Lake via trestle (later replaced with a causeway), and the trackage itself became scrap metal for the cause in World War II.
BaltACDAll any railroader needs - moves on demand, stops on demand - pyrotechnics are just an added benefit.
Same with mosquito control....
zugmann BaltACD Could be. Above my pay grade. It moved and stopped. All I needed.
BaltACD
Could be. Above my pay grade. It moved and stopped. All I needed.
All any railroader needs - moves on demand, stops on demand - pyrotechnics are just an added benefit.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDSounds like a crack in somewhere in the exhaust manifolding. Air where the designers didn't want it can cause all sorts of issues.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
Ns local was uptown when I left work.Got the swamp mowed.Mother nature then sent us some showers.Supper then time for clean up.
joe
Ran one of the RS18u's last weekend, was conductor this past weekend.
Got around 1.75" of rain in 24 hours here at the house on Sunday. There wasn't much runoff - I think it all got sucked directly into the very dry ground. Made for a wet day working on the railroad, though.
I've taken over running one of our local ham (amateur radio) nets on Monday mornings. If nothing else, it means I have to be up in time to run it... It's like being a moderator at a debate, but we rarely (if ever) get into verbal fisticuffs...
zugmann CSSHEGEWISCH This one was a lot louder than the other ES'es I've run, though.
CSSHEGEWISCH
This one was a lot louder than the other ES'es I've run, though.
Sounds like a crack in somewhere in the exhaust manifolding. Air where the designers didn't want it can cause all sorts of issues.
CSSHEGEWISCHI've noticed the same thing with U-boats way back in the early 1970's. Shouldn't be too surprising since the FDL and the 251 have the same bore and stroke. (9 X 10.5)
Norm48327 Our grass is begging for a drink, and we got all of three drops yesterday.
Our grass is begging for a drink, and we got all of three drops yesterday.
Sorry to hear. It's been raining almost constantly all week here. I think our grass is gonna drown
Been visiting Altoona occasionally. It's pretty cool seeing SD60s there, something I've wanted since I started fanning in 2006....Man I can't believe it's been 10 years now! Though I tend to make small road trips to do most of my fanning these days. LaCrosse and the Twin Cities never disappoint, and I try to visit IRM twice a year. It's been fun!
Your friendly neighborhood CNW fan.
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